Our "All Saints" Cheering Section

Did you know that Halloween comes from “All Hallows’ Eve” or the eve of All Saints' Day? On the Christian holiday of All Saints' Day -- celebrated November 1st -- we remember what we profess regularly in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe … in the communion of the saints.”

My father once explained the communion of the saints this way: “The Church of Jesus Christ is the locus of a deep and abiding eternal communion which exists between all true believers, living and dead. Our loved ones do not leave us when they die; they are translated into an existence that is more real than the life that we know. There they live and rejoice as the Church Triumphant, a constant source of strength and encouragement to us who continue here as the Church Militant.

This is not just a pious platitude, at least on my part. From time to time I am refreshed and invigorated as I remember persons, now dead or living far away, who have been significant guides on my own faith journey; and not just as I remember them, but as I sense their real spiritual presence looking over my shoulder, chastising, forgiving, encouraging, cheering me on.

• I think of Eleanor, a woman who taught me that it really is true, in the words of the song, that you can ‘take this world’s goods and give me Jesus.’ Jesus was literally all that Eleanor had, and she was completely satisfied. It is because of her that I know that spiritual truth to be true.

• I think of Donna, now living in California, who has a unique gift of leading others in small group ministry. She just knows how to help people open up to each other and to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is because of her that I know it is possible to be fully dedicated to Christ and open to the Spirit, and yet to bring all sorts of people together rather than to repel or divide them.

• I think of Paul, a man of God who cared for his mentally ill wife for over 40 years rather than institutionalize her, and still gave of himself in amazing ways as a church leader, a fraternal leader, a business leader. But what he did for me, and still does from the heavenly gallery, is to encourage and affirm me in my ministry. His ministry to me was that precious one of honest and loving feedback. It is because of him that I know that God can use me to communicate the Gospel and to touch lives with God’s love.

The saints who surround us give us enormous energy to persevere in the race of the Christian life. One of our most serious enemies these days, individually and as the Church, is apathy, fatigue, depression. As those of us who lead the Church see our supply of willing volunteers and workers and contributors get sucked away by competing activities and institutions of the secular world, a dark pall settles over us. We feel alone. We are tempted to give up.

But if we have any spiritual sensitivity left at all, and if we can get to a quiet place away from the din of the world, and if we listen carefully, we should ‘hear’ their pulsating cheers – low and distant at first, but gradually louder and close by: ‘Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!’ These are the voices of those who have gone before us in the battle and who have fought against overwhelming odds and have triumphed. They are Abraham and Sarah and Moses and David, and my Eleanor and Donna and Paul, and your Frank and Mary and other saints. They surround us even now like a great cloud of witnesses, chanting the victory they know through the Risen Christ, enjoying the hope that once kept them going through dark days and thin times – the hope that is still set out there before us!

When I look only within myself to overcome the sadness and depression, I sink deeper and deeper. But when I listen to their voices – that great cloud of witnesses – I know that I must persevere; I can persevere by grace until He takes me home."

“So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest if we do not give up.” – Galatians 6:9

From: "Run with Perseverance"

Scripture: Hebrews 11:1-39; 12:1-4, 12-14

Preached at Paoli U.M. Church

Be Opened!

Smart phones don’t make you smarter. I’m beginning to think they have the opposite effect. Take my morning, for instance. I’ve accompanied my wife, Dorry to a conference in Chicago, so as she headed off to her morning session I decided to find a Starbucks for some coffee. Here’s how it went:

I reach for my trusty iPhone, open Google Maps, type in “Starbucks,” and am informed that there's one located a mere six-minute walk from the hotel. Off I go, dutifully following the blue-dotted route doled out by a server at Google. My phone tells me to walk around the backside of a nearby shopping mall. I comply without giving it a second thought. I come around corner after corner of this huge, multifaceted mall building, walking past loading docks and dumpsters. Mall employees and delivery truck drivers eye me cautiously, wondering why someone is wandering the backside of the mall. After walking far longer than six minutes around the footprint of this giant mall, Google Maps tells me that I have passed my destination … but I’m still circling the building with no Starbucks in sight. Could it be in the mall? I walk inside, find an old-school store directory sign, and learn that the Starbucks is indeed inside this mall on the second floor.

Eventually, with a coffee in hand, I trudge back to the hotel, not knowing that my embarrassment isn’t yet complete. As I walk through the hotel lobby and past its restaurant, I see a huge sign, as tall as me, announcing: “We proudly serve Starbucks coffee!” Yes, I had walked right past that sign, with my head buried in my phone, when I first set off on my misadventure. And if I had bothered to speak with anyone who worked for the hotel as I headed out in search of Starbucks, I'm sure they would have pointed out the sign to me.

My father passed away before the invention of the iPhone and before the rise of our internet culture. He nevertheless saw where we were headed: “It seems that there is so much communication in our world today, and yet so little of it. We have instant communication with any place in the world via satellite, and yet poor communication between husbands and wives feeds a skyrocketing divorce rate. There is a veritable flood of information at our fingertips by turning a TV dial or picking up a newspaper or magazine, and yet we don’t know the people who live across the hall or down the street or, dare we say, under our own roof. We exchange information; we banter back and forth about minor matters, but we do not truly communicate in the sense of sharing life with life. We hear but do not listen. We speak but say nothing.”

My dad believed that there was a good case to be made for defining “sin” as a breakdown in communication between persons or between humanity and God. Dad preached, “Sin is not only hostile acts or overt crimes – robbing a bank, abusing drugs, committing adultery. Sin is also being unable to hear the person God has put next to you in life who is trying to say something to you in a way that is different than you are ‘programmed’ to hear. And somehow, you pass each other like two ships in the night.

We are deaf. We fail to hear what God is trying to tell us through the words and actions of those around us. We are deaf to catch the sobs of grief, whether across the seas, or across the railroad tracks, or across the street, or across the dinner table. We are too hard of hearing to catch the rumble of discontent coming from those who are oppressed, or to discern the thunder of coming storms. And as is the case with many hearing defects, speech is affected as well. Because we don’t listen to others, we are sure they don’t listen to us, and we say nothing significant to them. We do not risk revealing ourselves or reaching out with words of comfort and concern. This closed-eared, tight-lipped self-sufficiency breeds ulcers, strained and tense relationships, mental breakdowns and general unhappiness – not to mention the great social problems of our time."

In Mark 7:31-37, there’s a fascinating story of Jesus healing a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. Jesus takes the man aside from the crowd, puts his fingers in the man’s ears, spits on the man’s tongue, and shouts, “Ephphatha!” – which means “Be opened!” The man is healed in that strange and wonderful private encounter with Jesus.

Dad saw this deaf and mute man “as a symbol for the isolated, twisted and partial lives we live under the power of sin.” The man’s healing is a sign that “God is acting through Jesus Christ to restore his fallen, fragmented creation to its former beauty and wholeness. How does God do this? God comes to each of us individually today in the person of the Holy Spirit, and he takes us aside from the multitude, privately, as Jesus did with the deaf man. Go with him when he tries to take you aside from the press of your work, the anxieties of your family, your health, your business and all your diversions. Go aside with him so that it is only you and him alone to confront this problem you have to work on – this terrible barrier to communication that sin has placed between you and him, between you and others. Hear him say the gracious words, ‘Be opened!’ Feel the power as his love penetrates that barrier and loosens and relaxes you so you can open to him as as a flower opens to the sun. Jesus is stronger than the barrier of sin. He can push it aside and invite us to open up and restore our relationship with him.

One of life's most startling and profound experiences is to hear Jesus saying, ‘Be opened!’ It is like water coming out of your ears after you’ve been swimming. Now you hear things that you couldn’t hear or could only partially hear before. And because Jesus has spoken and you have heard him, and communication has been restored between you, now you find a similar thing happening between you and those around you. To be open to God, you find, is to also be open to others. The two go together naturally."

As I was posting this, Dorry sent me a text asking if I would find us a place to have dinner together after her seminar has concluded for the day. I’ve learned my lesson. It's time to put down my iPhone, walk down to the hotel's concierge desk, and strike up a real conversation with a real person. It's time to be opened.

From: "Be Opened"

Scripture: Mark 7:31-37; Isaiah 35:4-10